"I
hearpeople
everywhere saying that the trouble with our time is that we have
no great leaders anymore. If we look back we always had
them. But to me it seems there is a very profound reason
why there are no great [political] leaders anymore. It is
because they are no longer needed. The message is clear.
You no longer want to be led from the outside. Every man
must be his own leader. He now knows enough not to follow
other people. He must follow the light that's within
himself, and through this light he will create a new community" —
Laurens Van Der Post

“Too
long have the workers of the world waited for some Moses to lead them
out of bondage. I would not lead you out if I could; for if you could be
led out, you could be led back again. I would have you make up your
minds there is nothing that you cannot do for yourselves.”

Eugene V. Debs: From an address on Industrial
Unionism delivered at Grand Central Palace. New York
City, Dec. 18,1905.

04/11/07 "ICH" -- -- -Had Enough? Am I the only guy in this
country who's fed up with what's happening? Where the hell is our
outrage? We should be screaming bloody murder. We've got a gang of
clueless bozos steering our ship of state right over a cliff, we've got
corporate gangsters stealing us blind, and we can't even clean up after
a hurricane much less build a hybrid car. But instead of getting mad,
everyone sits around and nods their heads when the politicians say,
"Stay the course." Stay the course? You've got to be kidding. This is
America, not the damned Titanic. I'll give you a sound bite: Throw the
bums out! You might think I'm getting senile, that I've gone off my
rocker, and maybe I have. But someone has to speak up. I hardly
recognize this country anymore. The President of the United States is
given a free pass to ignore the Constitution, tap our phones, and lead
us to war on a pack of lies.Congress responds to record deficits by
passing a huge tax cut for the wealthy (thanks, but I don't need it).
The most famous business leaders are not the innovators but the guys in
handcuffs. While we're fiddling in Iraq, the Middle East is burning and
nobody seems to know what to do. And the press is waving pom-poms
instead of asking hard questions. That's not the promise of America my
parents and yours traveled across the ocean for.

I've had enough. How about you? I'll go a step further. You can't call
yourself a patriot if you're not outraged. This is a fight I'm ready and
willing to have. My friends tell me to calm down. They say, "Lee, you're
eighty-two years old. Leave the rage to the young people." I'd love to,
as soon as I can pry them away from their iPods for five seconds and get
them to pay attention. I'm going to speak up because it's my patriotic
duty. I think people will listen to me. They say I have a reputation as
a straight shooter. So I'll tell you how I see it, and it's not pretty,
but at least it's real. I'm hoping to strike a nerve in those young
folks who say they don't vote because they don't trust politicians to
represent their interests. Hey, America, wake up. These guys work for
us. Who Are These Guys, Anyway? Why are we in this mess? How did we end
up with this crowd in Washington? Well, we voted for them, or at least
some of us did. But I'll tell you what we didn't do. We didn't agree to
suspend the Constitution. We didn't agree to stop asking questions or
demanding answers. Some of us are sick and tired of people who call free
speech treason. Where I come from that's a dictatorship, not a
democracy. And don't tell me it's all the fault of right-wing
Republicans or liberal Democrats. That's an intellectually lazy
argument, and it's part of the reason we're in this stew. We're not just
a nation of factions. We're a people. We share common principles and
ideals. And we rise and fall together.

Where are the voices of leaders who can inspire us to action and make us
stand taller? What happened to the strong and resolute party of Lincoln?
What happened to the courageous, populist party of FDR and Truman? There
was a time in this country when the voices of great leaders lifted us up
and made us want to do better. Where have all the leaders gone?

The Test of a Leader

I've never been Commander in Chief, but I've been a CEO. I understand a
few things about leadership at the top. I've figured out nine points,
not ten (I don't want people accusing me of thinking I'm Moses). I call
them the "Nine Cs of Leadership." They're not fancy or complicated. Just
clear, obvious qualities that every true leader should have. We should
look at how the current administration stacks up. Like it or not, this
crew is going to be around until January 2009. Maybe we can learn
something before we go to the polls in 2008. Then let's be sure we use
the leadership test to screen the candidates who say they want to run
the country. It's up to us to choose wisely.

A leader has to show CURIOSITY. He has to listen to people outside of
the "Yes, sir" crowd in his inner circle. He has to read voraciously,
because the world is a big, complicated place. George W. Bush brags
about never reading a newspaper. "I just scan the headlines," he says.
Am I hearing this right? He's the President of the United States and he
never reads a newspaper? Thomas Jefferson once said, "Were it left to me
to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or
newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate for a moment to
prefer the latter." Bush disagrees. As long as he gets his daily hour in
the gym, with Fox News piped through the sound system, he's ready to go.

If a leader never steps outside his comfort zone to hear different
ideas, he grows stale. If he doesn't put his beliefs to the test, how
does he know he's right? The inability to listen is a form of arrogance.
It means either you think you already know it all, or you just don't
care. Before the 2006 election, George Bush made a big point of saying
he didn't listen to the polls. Yeah, that's what they all say when the
polls stink. But maybe he should have listened, because 70 percent of
the people were saying he was on the wrong track. It took a "thumping"
on election day to wake him up, but even then you got the feeling he
wasn't listening so much as he was calculating how to do a better job of
convincing everyone he was right.

A leader has to be CREATIVE, go out on a limb, be willing to try
something different. You know, think outside the box. George Bush prides
himself on never changing, even as the world around him is spinning out
of control. God forbid someone should accuse him of flip-flopping.
There's a disturbingly messianic fervor to his certainty. Senator Joe
Biden recalled a conversation he had with Bush a few months after our
troops marched into Baghdad. Joe was in the Oval Office outlining his
concerns to the President, the explosive mix of Shiite and Sunni, the
disbanded Iraqi army, the problems securing the oil fields. "The
President was serene," Joe recalled. "He told me he was sure that we
were on the right course and that all would be well. 'Mr. President,' I
finally said, 'how can you be so sure when you don't yet know all the
facts?'" Bush then reached over and put a steadying hand on Joe's
shoulder. "My instincts," he said. "My instincts." Joe was
flabbergasted. He told Bush,"Mr. President, your instincts aren't good
enough." Joe Biden sure didn't think the matter was settled. And, as we
all know now, it wasn't. Leadership is all about managing change,
whether you're leading a company or leading a country. Things change,
and you get creative. You adapt. Maybe Bush was absent the day they
covered that at Harvard Business School.

A leader has to COMMUNICATE. I'm not talking about running off at the
mouth or spouting sound bites. I'm talking about facing reality and
telling the truth. Nobody in the current administration seems to know
how to talk straight anymore. Instead, they spend most of their time
trying to convince us that things are not really as bad as they seem. I
don't know if it's denial or dishonesty, but it can start to drive you
crazy after a while. Communication has to start with telling the truth,
even when it's painful. The war in Iraq has been, among other things, a
grand failure of communication. Bush is like the boy who didn't cry wolf
when the wolf was at the door. After years of being told that all is
well, even as the casualties and chaos mount, we've stopped listening to
him.

A leader has to be a person of CHARACTER. That means knowing the
difference between right and wrong and having the guts to do the right
thing. Abraham Lincoln once said, "If you want to test a man's
character, give him power." George Bush has a lot of power. What does it
say about his character? Bush has shown a willingness to take bold
action on the world stage because he has the power, but he shows little
regard for the grievous consequences. He has sent our troops (not to
mention hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi citizens) to their
deaths. For what? To build our oil reserves? To avenge his daddy because
Saddam Hussein once tried to have him killed? To show his daddy he's
tougher? The motivations behind the war in Iraq are questionable, and
the execution of the war has been a disaster. A man of character does
not ask a single soldier to die for a failed policy.

A leader must have COURAGE. I'm talking about balls. (That even goes for
female leaders.) Swagger isn't courage. Tough talk isn't courage. George
Bush comes from a blue-blooded Connecticut family, but he likes to talk
like a cowboy. You know, My gun is bigger than your gun. Courage in the
twenty-first century doesn't mean posturing and bravado. Courage is a
commitment to sit down at the negotiating table and talk.

If you're a politician, courage means taking a position even when you
know it will cost you votes. Bush can't even make a public appearance
unless the audience has been handpicked and sanitized. He did a series
of so-called town hall meetings last year, in auditoriums packed with
his most devoted fans. The questions were all softballs.

To be a leader you've got to have CONVICTION, a fire in your belly.
You've got to have passion. You've got to really want to get something
done. How do you measure fire in the belly? Bush has set the all-time
record for number of vacation days taken by a U.S. President, four
hundred and counting. He'd rather clear brush on his ranch than immerse
himself in the business of governing. He even told an interviewer that
the high point of his presidency so far was catching a
seven-and-a-half-pound perch in his hand-stocked lake. It's no better on
Capitol Hill. Congress was in session only ninety-seven days in 2006.
That's eleven days less than the record set in 1948, when President
Harry Truman coined the term do-nothing Congress. Most people would
expect to be fired if they worked so little and had nothing to show for
it. But Congress managed to find the time to vote itself a raise. Now,
that's not leadership.

A leader should have CHARISMA. I'm not talking about being flashy.
Charisma is the quality that makes people want to follow you. It's the
ability to inspire. People follow a leader because they trust him.
That's my definition of charisma. Maybe George Bush is a great guy to
hang out with at a barbecue or a ball game. But put him at a global
summit where the future of our planet is at stake, and he doesn't look
very presidential. Those frat-boy pranks and the kidding around he
enjoys so much don't go over that well with world leaders. Just ask
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who received an unwelcome shoulder
massage from our President at a G-8 Summit. When he came up behind her
and started squeezing, I thought she was going to go right through the
roof.

A leader has to be COMPETENT. That seems obvious, doesn't it? You've got
to know what you're doing. More important than that, you've got to
surround yourself with people who know what they're doing. Bush brags
about being our first MBA President. Does that make him competent? Well,
let's see. Thanks to our first MBA President, we've got the largest
deficit in history, Social Security is on life support, and we've run up
a half-a-trillion-dollar price tag (so far) in Iraq. And that's just for
starters. A leader has to be a problem solver, and the biggest problems
we face as a nation seem to be on the back burner.

You can't be a leader if you don't have COMMON SENSE. I call this
Charlie Beacham's rule. When I was a young guy just starting out in the
car business, one of my first jobs was as Ford's zone manager in
Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. My boss was a guy named Charlie Beacham, who
was the East Coast regional manager. Charlie was a big Southerner, with
a warm drawl, a huge smile, and a core of steel. Charlie used to tell
me, "Remember, Lee, the only thing you've got going for you as a human
being is your ability to reason and your common sense. If you don't know
a dip of horseshit from a dip of vanilla ice cream, you'll never make
it." George Bush doesn't have common sense. He just has a lot of sound
bites. You know,
Mr.they'll-welcome-us-as-liberators-no-child-left-behind-heck-of-a-job-Brownie-mission-accomplished
Bush. Former President Bill Clinton once said, "I grew up in an
alcoholic home. I spent half my childhood trying to get into the
reality-based world, and I like it here." I think our current President
should visit the real world once in a while.

The Biggest C is Crisis Leaders are made, not born. Leadership is forged
in times of crisis. It's easy to sit there with your feet up on the desk
and talk theory. Or send someone else's kids off to war when you've
never seen a battlefield yourself. It's another thing to lead when your
world comes tumbling down. On September 11, 2001, we needed a strong
leader more than any other time in our history. We needed a steady hand
to guide us out of the ashes. Where was George Bush? He was reading a
story about a pet goat to kids in Florida when he heard about the
attacks. He kept sitting there for twenty minutes with a baffled look on
his face. It's all on tape. You can see it for yourself. Then, instead
of taking the quickest route back to Washington and immediately going on
the air to reassure the panicked people of this country, he decided it
wasn't safe to return to the White House. He basically went into hiding
for the day, and he told Vice President Dick Cheney to stay put in his
bunker. We were all frozen in front of our TVs, scared out of our wits,
waiting for our leaders to tell us that we were going to be okay, and
there was nobody home. It took Bush a couple of days to get his bearings
and devise the right photo op at Ground Zero. That was George Bush's
moment of truth, and he was paralyzed. And what did he do when he'd
regained his composure? He led us down the road to Iraq, a road his own
father had considered disastrous when he was President. But Bush didn't
listen to Daddy. He listened to a higher father. He prides himself on
being faith based, not reality based. If that doesn't scare the crap out
of you,I don't know what will.

A Hell of a Mess.

So here's where we stand. We're immersed in a bloody war with no plan
for winning and no plan for leaving. We're running the biggest deficit
in the history of the country. We're losing the manufacturing edge to
Asia, while our once-great companies are getting slaughtered by health
care costs. Gas prices are skyrocketing, and nobody in power has a
coherent energy policy. Our schools are in trouble. Our borders are like
sieves. The middle class is being squeezed every which way. These are
times that cry out for leadership.

But when you look around, you've got to ask: "Where have all the leaders
gone?" Where are the curious, creative communicators? Where are the
people of character, courage, conviction, competence, and common sense?
I may be a sucker for alliteration, but I think you get the point.

Name me a leader who has a better idea for homeland security than making
us take off our shoes in airports and throw away our shampoo? We've
spent billions of dollars building a huge new bureaucracy, and all we
know how to do is react to things that have already happened. Name me
one leader who emerged from the crisis of Hurricane Katrina. Congress
has yet to spend a single day evaluating the response to the hurricane,
or demanding accountability for the decisions that were made in the
crucial hours after the storm. Everyone's hunkering down, fingers
crossed, hoping it doesn't happen again. Now, that's just crazy. Storms
happen. Deal with it. Make a plan. Figure out what you're going to do
the next time.

Name me an industry leader who is thinking creatively about how we can
restore our competitive edge in manufacturing. Who would have believed
that there could ever be a time when "the Big Three" referred to
Japanese car companies? How did this happen, and more important, what
are we going to do about it? Name me a government leader who can
articulate a plan for paying down the debt, or solving the energy
crisis, or managing the health care problem. The silence is deafening.
But these are the crises that are eating away at our country and milking
the middle class dry.

I have news for the gang in Congress. We didn't elect you to sit on your
asses and do nothing and remain silent while our democracy is being
hijacked and our greatness is being replaced with mediocrity. What is
everybody so afraid of? That some bobblehead on Fox News will call them
a name? Give me a break. Why don't you guys show some spine for a
change? Had Enough? Hey, I'm not trying to be the voice of gloom and
doom here. I'm trying to light a fire. I'm speaking out because I have
hope. I believe in America. In my lifetime I've had the privilege of
living through some of America's greatest moments. I've also experienced
some of our worst crises, the Great Depression, World War II, the Korean
War, the Kennedy assassination, the Vietnam War, the 1970s oil crisis,
and the struggles of recent years culminating with 9/11. If I've learned
one thing, it's this: You don't get anywhere by standing on the
sidelines waiting for somebody else to take action. Whether it's
building a better car or building a better future for our children, we
all have a role to play. That's the challenge I'm raising in this book.
It's a call to action for people who, like me, believe in America. It's
not too late, but it's getting pretty close. So let's shake off the
horseshit and go to work. Let's tell 'em all we've had enough.